A Belgian Catholic bishop said he “will make every effort to ordain married men as priests” and expressed his commitment to doing so by 2028.

In a pastoral letter, Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp wrote that the question is “no longer whether” married men can be ordained, but “when” and “who will do it.”

“I will make every effort to ordain married men as priests for our diocese by 2028,” Bonny said. “I will approach them personally and ensure that by then they have the necessary theological training and pastoral experience, comparable to that of other priest candidates.”

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The Catholic Church has both married and celibate priests, but a norm of having a married and celibate priesthood exists only in its 23 self-governing Eastern Catholic churches that are in communion with the pope as the bishop of Rome and head of the Latin Catholic Church. 

The Latin Church, headed by Pope Leo XIV, has a norm of married and celibate deacons like the other Eastern Catholic churches, but only celibates may go on to ordination to priesthood. The ordination of married men to the priesthood is a limited exception in the Latin Church.

The Latin Church does allow some former Anglican priests or Protestant ministers who have come into full communion with the Church to petition for ordination to the Catholic priesthood. While the Church affirms the good fruit of their prior pastoral ministry, it does not recognize orders in Protestant or Anglican churches as equivalent to the Sacrament of Holy Orders. These married candidates are ordained to the Catholic priesthood only after undergoing a process of discernment with their wives and receiving appropriate priestly formation.

Bonny’s assertions on the ordination of married men were among several issues he addressed in his pastoral letter regarding the implementation of synodal processes discussed during the Synod of Bishops on synodality. He said many dioceses are facing a “historical shortage of local priests,” with the number of unmarried men wanting to join the priesthood falling to “just above zero.”

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While expressing his gratitude to foreign priests who have helped fill the shortage in his diocese, Bonny said, “they cannot meet all our needs.”

“They come to help us, not to replace us. Moreover, it would not be fair to place the burden of our shortages on their shoulders. They, too, are keen to see more local confreres, even married confreres, to work with them,” he wrote.

Noting that Eastern Catholic churches allow for married men to be ordained to the priesthood, Bonny said that “no one can explain any longer why the ordination of married men is possible for Eastern Catholic seminarians or for Catholic converts, but not for native Catholic vocations.”

Bishops, whether in the Catholic or Orthodox churches, are chosen from only the celibate priests.

Citing Church teaching on discernment and the episcopal duty “to support and bring together all the gifts of the Spirit,” Bonny said he viewed the ordination of married men not as a doctrinal break, but as a necessary pastoral development tied to credibility, local responsibility and the future of Church life.

“It is an illusion to think that a serious synodal-missionary process in the West still has a chance without also ordaining married men as priests,” he said. “It would be a blessing for the Church if we could also apply this ‘ecclesial discernment’ to the kind of priest a community needs, or to whom the community would see as a suitable candidate for the priesthood.”

While he expressed his hopes to ordain married men by 2028, Bonny said he would spend the next two years “communicating with the Belgian Bishops’ Conference and with the Vatican, as we can learn from each other’s experiences and insights.”

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The subject of married priests became a prominent topic of discussion during the pontificate of Pope Francis, especially during the 2019 Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.

Although Pope Leo has not directly addressed the possibility of ordaining married men, he has spoken about the importance of celibacy in a June 2025 meditation to bishops for the Jubilee Year.